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Winner of the 2017 Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism

“This is the best book about the Beatles ever written” —Mashable

Rob Sheffield, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape offers an entertaining, unconventional look at the most popular band in history, the Beatles, exploring what they mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them.

Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles, or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn’t another exposé about how they broke up. It isn’t a history of their gigs or their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles music on their parents’ stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? And why do they still matter so much to us, nearly fifty years after they broke up?

As he did in his previous books, Love is a Mix Tape, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, and Turn Around Bright Eyes, Sheffield focuses on the emotional connections we make to music. This time, he focuses on the biggest pop culture phenomenon of all time—The Beatles. In his singular voice, he explores what the Beatles mean today, to fans who have learned to love them on their own terms and not just for the sake of nostalgia.

Dreaming the Beatles tells the story of how four lads from Liverpool became the world’s biggest pop group, then broke up—but then somehow just kept getting bigger. At this point, their music doesn’t belong to the past—it belongs to right now. This book is a celebration of that music, showing why the Beatles remain the world’s favorite thing—and how they invented the future we’re all living in today.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is the best book about the Beatles ever written…passionate and eloquent…If aliens land tomorrow, and demand to know why we keep on pumping this particular brand of music into space, this is the first book you would hand them.” (Mashable)

“You’ll have a fantastic, joyous time reading Dreaming the Beatles from cover to cover.” (USA Today)

“[B]efore I began writing this I paged through Ian MacDonald’s canonical Revolution in the Head and Devin McKinney’s renowned The Beatles in Dream and History...But neither has a chance of topping Rob Sheffield’s Dreaming the Beatles.” (Robert Christgau, Village Voice)

“Dreaming the Beatles is the individual exploration of a universal pop experience—listening to the Beatles, thinking about the Beatles, reinventing the Beatles in your mind, listening to them again...explaining your own life through the only four people who will always belong to everyone.” (Chuck Klosterman, author of the New York Times bestseller But What If We’re Wrong)

“Usually hilarious, always surprising.” (Griel Marcus, Village Voice)

“The essential joy of Dreaming the Beatles are these connections made between historical events, mythological band history, and the song itself—it’s sparkling, insightful, occasionally humorous writing unclouded by irony or cynicism about a capital-G Great Band.” (Spin)

“As he’s proven in, well, all of his books, Sheffield writes about fandom, about the condition of loving a thing, as well or better than anyone, which is no small thing for a critic as savvy as he is.” (Austin American-Statesman)

“For Sheffield, a chronicler of pop culture whose work blends thoughtful criticism and unabashed fandom, the heart of the Beatles story is about relationships.” (Boston Globe)

“Half a century after their apogee...is there anything left to say about the most chronicled rock band in history? It turns out there is. Rob Sheffield’s new book Dreaming the Beatles looks at the Fab Four from a fresh point of view.” (Los Angeles Review of Books)

From the Back Cover

FromDreaming the Beatles

John, Paul, George, and Ringo remain the world’s favorite thing. Yet every theory ever devised to explain why has failed. It wasn’t their timing. It wasn’t drugs. It wasn’t that they were the voice of a generation. The vast majority of Beatles fans today weren’t born when the records came out—yet the allure of the music keeps on growing, nearly fifty years after the band split. The world keeps dreaming the Beatles, long after the Beatles themselves figured the dream was over. Our Beatles have outlasted theirs.

It is truly impossible to imagine a world without the Beatles. Yes, they are the biggest, most iconic rock band of all time. Their music continues to delight, define, and provide a soundtrack for fans all over the globe. It seems, however, that with each passing decade this band has become more popular, more influential, more ubiquitous, more beloved, just MORE, and in Dreaming the Beatles, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape brings his singular voice to the most universal pop culture phenomenon in history, exploring what the Beatles mean today and why they still matter so intensely to a generation that has never known a world without them. This is not another biography of the band, or an exposé of how they broke up. It isn’t a history of their gigs or gear. It’s a fresh, unconventional look at the Beatles’ astounding story, from their early friendship to their Sixties creative explosion to their crazed solo years. And, as in his previous books like Talking to Girls About Duran Duran and On Bowie, Sheffield focuses on the emotional connections we make to music. Chronicling his lifelong obsession with the Beatles along with the rest of the world’s, Dreaming the Beatles is a passionate celebration of the band and their music, showing how John, Paul, George, and Ringo invented the future we’re living in today. It’s a book that is brilliant, fresh, and universal—kind of like the Beatles themselves.

Top customer reviews

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I was born in late 1959 and my earliest memory is watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Their music is the soundtrack to my childhood and I've never stopped listening to them. I just finished reading the "Beatles: 1966" and "Dreaming the Beatles" back to back. Both books are phenomenal reads, totally different in style and content. 1966 is a historical account of the year the Beatles changed from being pop stars to being artists and changed musical history. Sheffield's book is told from the point of view of a fan who came to love the Beatles years after they split up. It is told with such humor and wit, with lines like "[George] won custody of Dylan in the Beatles divorce" - priceless, that I cannot wait to read it again. Do not let these ridiculous negative reviews dissuade you. Dreaming The Beatles is the book I always hoped someone would write. His thoughts on how Rubber Soul influenced Blonde on Blonde is worth the price of admission. GREAT BOOK!!!

As a child of the 60's, I was primed for the years of the Beatles. I bought every record as they released them and, at age 17, attended their August 21, 1966 concert at Crosley Field in Cincinnati (see the attached picture I took with a Polaroid). Though Sheffield's book rehashes plenty of well-known material about the Beatles (I've surely read most of it) there are a few new anecdotes that I found especially revealing. Those were what made the book worth reading. This book is also mostly Sheffield's opinions, usually about the various songs, and many of those I don't agree with at all. But that's how it goes with the Beatles playbook. I still relish the opinions and even when I don't agree they offer added insight.

The humor and cheeky weaving of lyrics and titles and Beatlefan tropes into the text is one reason. And anyone for whom music has assumed a sacred dimension in the texture of their lived lives will revel in that awareness on the author's part. Christgau, in his great essay on Neil Young, also touches on the mutual affirmation society that makes great--inspired--popular music feel so deep. But we are also a community of the living, and if we resist the urge to close it down and put it in a museum, life it still has to give. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

If you can't stand McCartney, this is the book for you. The author obviously dislikes Paul, misinterprets his ambitiousness as pure selfishness, slams some of Paul's greatest songs, and derides him on every other page, painting the other Beatles as helpless victims of his tyranny. He loves John and George, tries to make excuse for them, and is indifferent about Ringo. If that's what your looking for in a Beatle book, this screed's for you. And as for the rest of it, it's mostly re-tread stories you already know if you're a veteran fan. I'd save my money and skip this bargain-bin effort if I were you.

I enjoyed this book. I'm not the biggest fan of the Beatles and as such I haven't read a lot of books about them so a lot of the information here was pretty new to me.But this isn't a biography about the Beatles and really shouldn't be treated as such. This isn't the book to read if you want the story of the band. Rather this is a collection of essays about aspects and times in the Beatles catalog and their career. And as such I really enjoyed it. It was like having a conversation with someone who loves the Beatles and just can't wait to talk to you about them. It's infectious.

This might be the one book to recommend for anyone born too late to appreciate The Beatles as an active and living musical and cultural force. Sheffield is a good writer and a devoted fan for reasons that circumvent all the Baby Boomer nostalgia that has now passed into irrelevance. He's never lived in a world where the Beatles existed, but appreciates the many ways in which their influence lives on in the worlds that followed them. And, if that's not enough, he's done his homework. As a Boomer whose nostalgia has caused me to consume most of the literature published about The Beatles, I was surprised by how much I learned. A good read, whatever your generation.

I didn’t think there was much more to say or write about the Beatles. However, Rob Sheffield manages to do just that. There are one or two things in the book that are factually incorrect, but they are minor. Well thought out book, and I had a hard time putting it down.